Hindu dharma is implicitly at odds with monotheistic intolerance.
What is happening in India is a new historical awakening... Indian intellectuals, who want to be secure in their liberal beliefs, may not understand what is going on. But every other Indian knows precisely what is happening: deep down he knows that a larger response is emerging even if at times this response appears in his eyes to be threatening.

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Friday, April 01, 2005

Hundreds of senior editors, journalists and academicians marched to the Parliament on Monday in solidarity with the victims of the communal carnage in Gujarat, demanding that the Government should stop the violence immediately" says a report in The Telegraph. (5 March). The only trouble is that it was not the government that started the violence. Some one else did. And our intellectuals do not want to face up to that fact.

This was noted by none other than J. Jayalalitha, the new Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu who in a statement said that "it is saddening and strange that when acts (like the torching of the Sabarmati Express) are perpetuated against the minorities, all political leaders rush to condemn, but when the majority community is attached "not a single political leader" condemns it.

The point must be made that the Ahmedabad riots and killings followed the Godhra carnage and did not precede it, but that, apparently does not register on our secularists. The focus in the entire English media is on Ahmedabad. The reaction of our secularists to the Godhra killings in which over 58 people were killed including 25 women and 14 children has been muted. Consider what happened when Graham Staines and two of his sons were torched by tribals, in Orissa. All hell broke loose. The VHP, the Bajrang Dal and the BJP were damned. Never mind if subsequently the Wadhwa Commission in its report ruled out their involvement, but Hindu bodies got a bad name.

These 25 women and 14 children in the Sabarmati Express had done no harm to anyone. Their husbands and parents were not engaged in any missionary activities. And just like the Staines trio these 39 - not three - unfortunates were burnt alive. There is not a word of condemnation from minority leaders. One can only imagine what the outcry would have been if those torched were Muslims or Christians.

To press home the alleged viciousness of Hindus the American weekly Newsweek (March 11) quotes "graffiti on a wall on the outskirts of Ahmedabad where more than 400 lives have been lost in Hindu-Muslim clashes" that says: "Learn from us how to burn Muslims". One can be sure that none of our secular intellectuals would raise their voice against Newsweek. After all those burnt in Godhra were Hindus, weren't they? They are the majority community in India, aren't they? So what is there to complain about? The secular media virtually justifies the killing of the Kar Sevaks allegedly because they "raised slogans". In a secular India, Hindu lives are expendable.

It is always the Hindu who is in the wrong. Consider the case of the rape of nuns in Jhabua. It was again established to be an intra-tribal and intra-Christian affair. But the secular media and the minorities blamed the Hindu and the RSS. Or take the case of Catholic Church being vandalised in Bangalore. It was attributed to the Bajrang Dal. It was only when an unheard of Muslim sect was discovered to have been behind the crime that the chant of hatred against the Hindus stopped. No apology was ever given by minority leaders, let alone the secular media. Hindus are soft targets. BJP workers are regularly murdered in Kerala by the communists. Indeed a few months ago a BJP school teacher was hacked to pieces in front of school children right in the class. There was no hew and cry.

On March 3 The Hindu reported that "two RSS workers were hacked to death by suspected CPI(M) activists at Melur, near Palayad under the Dharmadom police station limits". Hacked to death. It couldn't have been an easy death. The men must have screamed in agony. But do these murders affect anyone? They are RSS workers, aren't they? Deserve to be killed, don't they? And consider what the CPM government is doing in West Bengal. Says a report in The Telegraph )5 March), a Kolkata-based secular paper: "After its unsuccessful attempt to dictate terms to the Ramakrishna Mission-run primary schools three years ago, The state government is now threatening to impose its writ on institutions run by Christian missionaries. Around 10 such schools in the city, followed by several in the districts, find themselves in the line of fire for not abiding by the government's directive to employ teachers appointed by the CPM-controlled primary councils. The provident fund and other post-retirement benefits of the headmistress of Ushagram School in Asansol have been blocked by the government after the institution refused to employ a teacher appointed by the Burdwan District Council". It is a long story of harassment.

Imagine what a shindig would have been raised if a BJP government tried to impose party-oriented teachers on Christian mission schools. There would have been screams of 'saffron tyranny'. If the communists attempt to undermine missionary hold in their own schools hardly any notice is taken of it. Of course, if there is a Maoist rebellion in Nepal or in the heart of India that is dismissed as just one of those things. The proletariat, one must know, has the right to kill. In Nepal 48 soldiers, 75 policemen, four civil servants and one civilian were killed in cold blood by Maoists but the story died the next day. How can Maoists be wrong? They are revolutionaries, aren't they? And revolutionaries have the right to kill, don't they?

On March 3 The Times of India woke up to the fact that two tableeq Jamaat preachers from Kashmir had come to twin towns of Godhra and Dahod earlier in December 2001 to make provocative speeches, forcing the seven mosques in Dahod to put up sign boards saying: "Outsiders shouldn't come to the mosques. Delivering provocative speeches is strictly prohibited". That bit of information never saw the light of day in any newspaper. Even news agencies apparently had never heard of Dahod and what has been going on there. So much for our news agencies and media reporting.

There is something sick with our secular media that calls for explanation. Ayodhya has been deliberately seen as a point of explosion when even such a respectable person as justice Ram Jois, former Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court has pointed out in an article that the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas is the undisputed owner of the 43 acres of land near the Babri Masjid site and that it is on this undisputed land that the VHP proposes to start reconstruction of the Ram Temple to fulfil the aspirations of the People. That point is deliberately disregarded. It does not serve the intentions of our secularists bent on damning the BJP and the VHP. Again and again the point is made that there is no evidence of a temple having been demolished by Babar's general in Ayodhya to build a mosque on the site, when every evidence points to that. There is, for example, the statement made by the Deputy Superintendent Archaeologist (Madras Circle), K. K. Muhammad (Indian Express) 15 December 1990 that said: "I can reiterate this (i.e. the existence of the Hindu temple before it was displaced by the Babri Masjid) with greater authority - for I was the only Muslim who had participated in the Ayodhya excavations in 1976-77 under Prof. Lal as a trainee. I have visited the excavation near the Babri site and seen the excavated pillar bases.

The JNU historians have highlighted only one part of our findings while suppressing the other. I often wondered why Prof. Lal is keeping quiet about it while JNU group went on a publication spree". Muhammad was to add; "Ayodhya is as holy to Hindus as Mecca is to Muslims; Muslims should respect the sentiments of their Hindu brethren and voluntarily hand over the structure for constructing the Rama Temple". Everyone keeps saying that they will respect a Supreme Court judgement. But when is that going to be delivered? in March 2103 - a century later? Judgement can be delivered in ten minutes flat. All the evidence is there and only the blind can ignore it. But why are our courts silent? Are they afraid to speak out lest they offend the secularists? Are they afraid of a Muslim backlash if the truth is told? And who believes the Muslim leaders when they say that they will obey a Supreme Court order? Did they obey such an order following the judgement given in the Shah Banoo case?

Besides, one is tempted to ak: what is so special about the Babri Masjid that tears should be shed over its demolition? Masjids are routinely demolished even in Saudi Arabia and in Pakistan to make way for development. On 22 February The Asian Age carried this item: "Some 12 unauthorised mosques were demolished in different sectors of Islamabad on Wednesday. The operation was jointly carried out by the Capital Development Authority, Islamabad Territory administration, district auqaf department and the Islamabad police. Official sources told Dawn that these mosques were razed as part of its ongoing drive against illegally constructed mosques and madaris in Islamabad... The mosques' management committees tried to protest during the operation but no untoward incident as reported". The Babri Masjid was imposed on the Hindu people of Ayodhya by a conqueror to show who was the ruler, and it had no legal or moral sanction. It could have been dismantled and subsequently rebuilt at VHP cost but the Muslim community would not hear of it. They had the backing of the secularists to whose pig-headedness must be attributed what has happened since then.